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Via di San Teodoro 8

Date: Friday 25 November
Time: 18.30

David Ryan's film, 'Via di San Teodoro 8', explores Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi's (1905-1988) house in the heart of Rome. It investigates different aspects of this house: its spaces, sounds and vistas, and its unique ambience opposite the ancient Roman Forum. It lies somewhere between experimental documentary and the filmic poetic essay, also portraying the early electronic instruments (Ondiolas) on which Scelsi composed and improvised in a rare performance by pianist Oscar Pizzo.

Without any dialogue, the film attempts to capture something of what the Hungarian film theorist Bela Balazs alluded to: the possibility of sound and image combining to articulate, "all that has speech, and speaks to us with the vast conversational powers of life [...]". The film exists in two formats: a single screen of 43 minutes, and a three screen continuous looped version with the latter being screened in the Ruskin Gallery.


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